


Bad Signal and Worse Coffee

by until_the_earth_is_free



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Dates, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/until_the_earth_is_free/pseuds/until_the_earth_is_free
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras and Grantaire meet in a hospital lobby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Signal and Worse Coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Atomiclovekitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atomiclovekitten/gifts).



> Hi Tara! 
> 
> I really hope you enjoy your present. (Kind of nervous, since this is my first work for the Les Mis fandom...!)  
> Have a lovely Christmas!
> 
> xx

"Fuck. Fuck... Fuck!"

Grantaire tried to suppress his laughter and ended up snorting unattractively behind his blank sketchbook. He'd been sitting in this bland hospital lobby for the past half-hour and for ten minutes had been watching a young man pace around agitatedly, waving his smart phone around with one hand and dragging a clattering IV-drip with the other. Every minute or so, he would wrinkle his nose and swear quietly before walking around the room again.

This was certainly much more entertaining than the waiting room upstairs.

After three more minutes of watching with an amused fascination, Grantaire summoned the energy and courage to help the poor man out.

"Hey, blondie!" he called. "The wifi connection is strongest on the second floor."

The man turned around from his position of pressing himself against the wall and stretching his phone up as high as he could reach and looked at Grantaire.

"What did you call me?" he asked, coldly, suddenly no longer the floundering idiot.

Grantaire felt heat rise up his neck at the intensity of the glare.

"I guess you've never seen _Tangled..."_ he said, his tone rather diminished.

The other man furrowed his eyebrows in confusion before asking, "which floor did you say I should go to?"

"Second," Grantaire replied, trying to look like he was relaxing back into his chair.

"Damn," the blond replied, giving his IV-drip a small shake in frustration.

"There are lifts," Grantaire offered.

"No, that's not the problem," he said, dismissively. "My friend who works with the children on the second floor will be furious if I am found wandering around when I'm supposed to be resting."

Grantaire chuckled.

"Well, maybe your paediatrician friend actually knows his shit and you _should_ be taking his advice and resting," he said with a grin that the other man did not return.

"Why do you assume my friend is male?" the blond man asked, his eyebrows raised and his tone challenging as he shifted his weight onto one leg and stared down at Grantaire.

"Around 70% of specialist doctors are men," Grantaire replied coolly, trying not to think about how well the opposition's cheekbones were exposed when he narrowed his eyes.

"Because people like you assume gender roles and expectations on jobs requiring higher qualifications and so fewer women are being hired, despite their absolutely sufficient degrees," the man finished and moved his drip stand as if about to go.

"What's your friend's name?" Grantaire asked, internally kicking himself for scaring the man away.

"Joly," the patient called over his shoulder as he walked over to the lift, drip stand racketing against the floor tiles.

"I fucking knew it!" Grantaire shouted across the room, causing a few disturbed glances from the other patients and miscellaneous nurses.

The man did not reply, only stiffened his shoulders slightly, before disappearing behind silver automatic doors and Grantaire threw his sketchbook on the seat next to him in frustration.

~O~

"Hey," greeted a soft voice in front of Grantaire. He looked up from tapping his pencil irritably against his untouched sketchbook and smiled at Jehan.

"You ready?"

Jehan smiled gently and they left the hospital together.

"Thanks for waiting," Jehan said as they walked down the windy, wet street towards their shared flat.

He was just being polite: the two men would always schedule their weekly appointments with their psychiatrist in consecutive slots so that they would make the commute together. It also used to give them both the opportunity to visit their old friend, Bahorel, from rehab and, although he moved into his own place a month ago, they still kept up this habit and would use their free hour in the waiting rooms to either write or draw. Jehan would normally wait outside the actual psych ward and write his poetry there, but Grantaire once got himself in trouble when he drew a patient who was waiting in the chair opposite him without her permission and she got incredibly offended and now felt like it was best if he kept his drawing in the generic hospital lobby downstairs.

"No problem. Was Dr. Combeferre as adamant about writing down a list of goals with you as he was with me?"

"Oh God, not those formulaic 'goals' again," Jehan groaned. Then, in a spiffing imitation of their psychiatrist's calm voice, continued, "'cognitive behavioural therapy, negative thought structures, dysfunctional thought patterns-'"

"You forgot 'downward cognitive spiral'!" interrupted Grantaire, laughing.

It was another tradition of theirs to rag on their therapy sessions on the way home, not out of any real bitterness as they both appreciated their doctor's help, but because it was so refreshing to remember that someone else understood 'psych ward humour' and it was always liberating, after an intensive session of analysing one's feelings, to indulge in light-hearted banter.

"Ooh, guess who I saw in the waiting room today!" Grantaire said, his eyes wide.

"Who?" Jehan gasped in comic exaggeration.

"Rapunzel, possessed by a social justice college student," Grantaire declared, gesticulating wildly with his arms.

"Hot?"

"As the sun god himself."

"Name?"

"That is a very good question," Grantaire replied.

Jehan sighed.

"Number?"

"A definite ten."

Jehan sighed again.

"You are utterly useless. Ooh, hey, do you want to stop for ice cream?"

~O~

"Courf! You're here! How did the protest go? Do you think you could help me-"

"Hey, Enjolras," said the dark-haired man by the hospital curtain, grinning at the indignation in his friend's voice. "Nice to see you too. And before you ask, I am under strict orders by Joly to not let you leave until your potassium levels are back to normal or something."

"But how did the protest go?" Enjolras asked urgently from the bed.

"Well, after you'd fainted during your speech, quite a few people panicked and it sort of became a bit chaotic. Bossuet has a black eye."

"Shit, there wasn't a fight, was there?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Courfeyrac replied, plopping himself on Enjolras's bed. "He just tripped over a discarded sign and hit a lamppost."

"Ouch. But-"

"So, was there a reason to your temporary lapse of consciousness?"

"Something about not eating enough or drinking too much coffee... Did David Cameron-"

"Enjolras! You have to look after yourself for fuck's sake!"

"I'm _fine._ But the LGBT community in Russia isn't and-"

"Dude! You have a fucking needle in your arm pumping you with God-knows-what. I think you need to take a break from politics for a bit."

Enjolras threw himself back onto his pillow with a petulant huffing sound.

"There isn't any internet here," he commented with a frown.

Courfeyrac laughed heartily.

"Of course you would have checked," he chuckled.

"However, there are infuriating people in the hospital lobby."

"Picking fights with the other patients, are we?" Courfeyrac asked, with sarcastic condescension.

"He defended the patriarchy," Enjolras said to the ceiling. "And he called me blondie."

His friend made a strange noise that sounded half-way between a scuffle and a choke. Enjolras looked up and saw Courf trying to muffle his laughter by biting his fist. He sighed and reverted his gaze to the ceiling again.

The calmer and more patient he pretended to be, the sooner he would be let out and able to sort out everything that had gone wrong during the protest.

However, in the meantime, if he went back and found the curly haired man in the lobby to give him one of his many rehearsed social justice speeches, would that count as activism?

~O~

That Saturday night found Grantaire sitting on the hard wood of the living room floor, staring catatonically at an empty canvas, twiddling a dry brush in one hand and humming distractedly. He felt Jehan's hand on his shoulder and saw a pale, slender hand place a mug of hot chocolate on the ground beside him.

"Not feeling it at the moment?" the poet clucked sympathetically. Comfort during creative blocks was one of the few benefits with two artists living in the same small space.

"I haven't been feeling it for the past week," mumbled Grantaire, rubbing his palms against his eyes.

"It's not... getting bad again, is it?" Jehan asked with concern.

"No, God no. I just can't remember what he looks like..."

"Who?"

Grantaire laughed, a dry humourless sound.

"I never did get his name, did I?" he said sardonically.

"Why are you so keen to draw _him?"_ Jehan inquired, sitting cross-legged to Grantaire's left, clutching a mug of chai tea.

They both watched the empty canvas for a few seconds.

"I don't know," Grantaire replied, hollowly. "This is ridiculous. I only talked to the guy for five minutes, tops. I'm being an idiot-"

"No," said Jehan simply, now looking at Grantaire intensely with dark eyes through his choppy, overgrown fringe. "No, you're not. If you think he is special in some way, I think he is very important to you, regardless of how much time you actually spent together. Maybe it's fate..."

As a pessimistic agnostic, Grantaire never bought into Jehan's ideas on 'fate' and 'higher powers', but he didn't want to disrespect his friend's beliefs and so merely made a small noise in the back of his throat in acknowledgement.

Jehan laughed musically, pressed a small kiss to the artist's temple and went to bed.

It was almost dawn when Grantaire surrendered to sleep.

~O~

Enjolras was let out on Sunday, under the condition that he would take his supplements, eat the frankly ridiculous portions of food cooked for him by Courf and return to the hospital on Thursday to have a psychiatric evaluation as to why he hadn't been eating and surviving only on coffee for longer than was wise.

It was a good thing that the healthcare system was so thorough, but so highly inconvenient.

He had also been forbidden to do anything except rest and watch terrible romantic comedies with Courfeyrac and Feuilly. It was like he was being under constant surveillance lest he do anything useful for humanity.

The films all seemed to follow the same basic plotline. Two people meet in unfortunate or embarrassing circumstances in which there is a great degree of misunderstanding and tomfoolery. They then meet again and learn that the other person is not that bad. Before they actually get together, there is an unnecessary plot device that causes the film to extend for another forty-five minutes, procrastinating from when they actually do get together.

And the credits roll.

It would have been much more enjoyable, or rather, less horrible, had Courfeyrac not been teasing Enjolras that the man he had met in the hospital lobby had been his 'unfortunate and embarrassing but ultimately love-worthy partner', which was aggravating because a) Courfeyrac was wrong and b) he was starting to think that Courfeyrac was not so wrong.

Goddamnit, of all the people he could have been attracted to in the past _year,_ why did it have to be _him?_

Not that Enjolras was at all having those sort of feelings. Courfeyrac was just messing with him.

Right?

~O~

It seemed to Grantaire, if just for a moment, that Jehan was right and that fate was real because, just as they were entering the psychiatry waiting room that Thursday, the 'wi-fi-guy', as he was dubbed by Bahorel (who seemed to know about Grantaire's infatuation within an hour of him telling Jehan, which made him think that maybe the two weren't 'just friends' as they were always loudly asserting), was leaving Combeferre's office, although minus a drip stand.

"Hello again, old friend," Grantaire greeted with an extroverted cheery wave. Goddamnit, why did he always feel like he needed to put on a show of being happy in front of people who made him nervous?

Jehan looked at his roommate in confusion; then, widening his eyes in realisation, gave a small squeak and ran into the office, despite the fact that Grantaire usually went first, and gave the two men time to talk alone.

"Hello," the wi-fi-guy replied, stiffly.

"Did you ever end up connecting to the internet?" Grantaire asked.

"No." He sounded rather mournful about it.

"Was it very important?" the artist asked, trying and failing to soften his tone so he probably sounded decidedly patronising.

"I majorly fucked up and I was trying to gage the consequences," he replied, staring over the other man's shoulder.

"Ah. That sucks." Because Grantaire didn't know what else to say.

"Thanks." His gaze went back to the man in front of him and his thin, pale lips almost twitched into a smile.

"I'm 'Taire, by the way," Grantaire said, offering his right hand because it felt like the polite thing to do.

"Enjolras," the blond replied, shaking the hand.

"Hey, uh, my friend's going to be about an hour with Combeferre. Do you want to maybe get some coffee?" Grantaire proposed with a hesitant smile.

Fuck, 'Taire. What the Hell were you thinking?  
Enjolras blinked.

"Or not, that's okay..." Grantaire tried to take back.

"Oh no, it sounds great. I'm just not allowed caffeine so I'll probably end up drinking apple juice."

Grantaire breathed out and grinned, only slightly shakily.

"And I'm not allowed alcohol so I guess we're both out of our elements, aren't we?"

~O~

A few minutes later, the two men were sitting on the bench in the bus stop outside the hospital with a drink each from the local newsagents as Enjolras refused to give money to unfair corporations that didn't need it and Grantaire was not willing to sit at a freelance cafe like a pretentious hipster.

"But if we just get the politicians to change the laws-" Enjolras began, eyes gleaming from the cold and from a desperation to make Grantaire understand his passion.

"And what?" Grantaire interrupted, waving his ironic juice box in a half-hearted attempt at passion. "The police won't enforce laws they don't believe in. Juries will turn a blind eye. People change laws, not the other way around."

"So what do you think changes people?" Enjolras retorted.

"Money. Fear. Bad haircuts..."

"Oh for God's sake!"

~O~

"Prouvaire! Can you _please_ stop flirting with Bahorel and help me clean this place up before Enjolras gets here?"

Jehan suddenly stepped away from his friend with a sheepish expression and looked over to Grantaire, who was stacking papers hurriedly and tossing them in a pile in the corner next to the couch.

"Wait, is this the wi-fi-guy?" Bahorel asked, grabbing a kernel of popcorn from the psychedelically patterned ceramic bowl that Jehan had bought last year at a charity shop.

"Yes," Jehan replied, snatching the bowl from the kitchen counter and bringing it out to the ottoman between the couch and the television. "Grantaire has invited him over to watch a Disney film. And, 'Taire dear, you're stimming again."

Grantaire quickly stuffed his trembling hand into the pocket of his favourite hoodie and tried to smooth his wild hair with the other.

"You'll be fine," Jehan assured him, lighting a candle on the ottoman that supposedly smelled like cinnamon but seemed to smell like weak instant coffee. But maybe that was because everything smelled like bad coffee to Grantaire since he "quit" his alcohol addiction and started another.

The doorbell rang, making Grantaire wince at the embarrassing recording of the Monty Python "what is your quest?" that Bahorel had set their doorbell as for a prank and that neither Jehan nor he had been able to figure out how to change back.

"We'll let him in and leave you two alone," Jehan offered, pulling Bahorel out the door by the sleeve with remarkable strength.

~O~

Enjolras knew Grantaire and his roommate made art, but he hadn't quite realised to the extent that they were _artists._ Whatever he had been expecting when Grantaire let him in was certainly not the charcoal-smudged walls, ink-stained rugs and- was that poetry written on the wall in biro? It was quirky, to say the least, and he fancied that it gave him a more evolved idea of what 'Taire was like as a person, and not just the controversial nihilist he had argued with for an hour in a bus shelter.

"Sorry it's a bit of a mess," said Grantaire, sweeping another pile of paper off the couch and offering Enjolras a seat.

"Organised chaos, right?" Enjolras said, causing Grantaire to laugh in surprise.

"Yeah, I- What are you doing?"

Enjolras looked up from what he was staring at on the floor on his side of the couch.

"There's a drawing of me," he commented, looking at Grantaire with uncomfortably serious eyes.

"Oh, uh, yeah, I draw most people," Grantaire replied, scratching the back of his head and trying not to sound flustered.

Enjolras looked back and picked up the piece of paper, revealing to 'Taire that it was the one he'd drawn in ten minutes with charcoal of the first time he'd seen Enjolras, looking at his phone with a disgruntled expression.

"This is from memory," Enjolras confirmed, not looking at Grantaire now but at the sheet of paper.

Grantaire nodded, then, realising that he hadn't been seen, made an audible noise of affirmation.

"But there's a better one, hang on-" he got up and started rustling through the pile, desperate to show Enjolras a picture that wasn't basically a stupid caricature, "here." He presented a watercolour this time, of the blond man standing on a plinth on Whitehall, brandishing a blank sign and shouting to the crowd-mass below with passion in his eyes.

"Wow," Enjolras murmured, grasping the watercolour with his other hand.

He was silent for several seconds, during which Grantaire fiddled with the frayed string of his hoodie and wished he had a beer.

"Actually, I think I prefer the first one," Enjolras said suddenly.

The very small part of Grantaire that he admitted was still 'pretentious art student' wanted to list the technical reasons that the watercolour had more merit than the ten-minute sketch, but the much larger part of Grantaire that wanted to know Enjolras's opinion asked,

"why?"

"It's more honest, more real. More accurate."

"Always with the technicalities, blondie."

"And it's kind of funny."

"What?" Grantaire looked up and met Enjolras's gaze.

"It's supposed to be funny, right?" Enjolras asked, as if nervous he had said the wrong thing.

Grantaire cleared his throat, breaking the eye contact.

"Uh, yeah, it is. I just didn't know you had a sense of humour."

"I take offense to that."

"Is there anything you don't take offense to?"

But Enjolras, instead of figuring out a witty reply, decided in that moment to lean over and kiss Grantaire.

He was a man of action, after all.

"Oh, shit," Enjolras swore, breaking apart after about half a second of Grantaire's shocked unresponsiveness to the gesture. Thinking out loud and panicky, "I've majorly fucked up again. I've made things weird. I-"

"Hey, dude," Grantaire interrupted, staring at Enjolras's lips and trying to hide the fact he was breathing really quickly and really heavily. "Don't you remember I was the guy you met in a psych ward? I can do weird."

And suddenly bad coffee was the last thing Grantaire was tasting.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
